Place branding sports: Strategies

for differentiating emerging,

transitional, negatively viewed
and newly industrialised nations
Received (in revised form): 26th October, 2006

Irving Rein
is a professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is the coauthor of Marketing Places: Attracting
Investment, Industry, and Tourism to Cities, States, and Nations (1993); the latest Marketing Places book, Marketing Latin
American and Caribbean Places (2006); and The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace (2006).

Ben Shields
is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His research is in the area
of sports and technology. He is the coauthor of The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace (2006).

Abstract Places have long sought a defining image to drive their economic and
social initiatives. Many of the branding strategies have been examined extensively and
utilised in the marketplace. For emerging, transition, negatively viewed, and newly
industrialised nations considering the possibilities for differentiation, a relatively
underused positioning is incorporating sports into the branding mix as both a primary
and secondary tool. There are a number of specific strategies that can be used to
implement this initiative, and the authors explore and analyse these sports place
branding possibilities.

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (2007) 3, 7385. doi:10.1057/palgrave.pb.6000049

Keywords: Sports, sporting events, teams, branding platforms, place branding

INTRODUCTION

Correspondence: Irving Rein,

Department of Communication
Studies,
Northwestern University,
1815, Chicago Avenue,
Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Tel: + 1 847 491 5851
Fax: + 1 847 467 1171
e-mail: i-rein@northwestern.edu

The global marketplace for place branding

has never been more competitive. Places
both established and emerging are under
increasing pressure to attract and retain
residents, tourists, and investors in a
rapidly globalising and fragmenting
marketplace. The demand for the most
effective place brand-building strategies
has never been greater, and for many
places with only a limited amount of
resources, difficult choices must be made
on which brand strategies to implement.
The problem is that many of the
strategies to compete are becoming stale
and require innovation. For example, it

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www.palgrave-journals.com/pb

was innovative 50 years ago to segment

and target tourists in a systematic manner.
During the past half century, places have
refined their tourist bureaus on local,
regional, state, and national levels and
added facilities and attractions, all to
capitalise on what has arguably become
the worlds largest business (World Travel
& Tourism Council and Accenture,
2006).1 Another strategic shift occurred in
the 1970s, when countries all over the
world began to compete for business
attraction, which often resulted in a zerosum game. What began in the United
States as an exodus from the traditional
steel, automobile, and clothing industries

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Rein and Shields

became a worldwide trend where the highest

bidder often got the company, the jobs, and the
sometimes temporary glory of running a plant.
In todays environment, many countries are
competing in the service economy as places like
India, China, and the Philippines are able to
provide state-of-the-art technology services that
were previously home bound in the first-world
countries. Many of these new developments,
which include editorial services, booking agents,
and accounting support, have only recently
become global trends. The strategy of highwage countries such as the United States,
England, and Germany of building premiere
educational and technology training institutions
is being challenged by lower cost competitors
who have the language, technology skills, and
the ability to price below market.
These initiatives are not obsolete and will
remain a part of the place attraction arsenal.
After all, in many instances they have worked,
and as a result, many places have become
destinations or economic powerhouses on the
basis of these strategies. Countries, however,
need to develop new ideas and perspectives in
order to survive in a marketplace as volatile as
this one. For example, the constant rotation of
higher priced manufacturing and services to an
ever-lower wage base threatens all countries
except the current winners. In the everchanging tourist marketplace, destinations that
own traditional market shares find themselves
being challenged by newcomers who
industrialise previously undeveloped historical
sites, add theme-based attractions, or reposition
to catch the latest cultural wave. In todays
marketplace, no country is safe, and there is a
continuous need to both innovate
and answer the challenges of a competitive
marketplace.

THE SPORTS SOLUTION

While there are a number of possible solutions
to generating and communicating a strong and
coherent place brand, this paper will explore
the significance of sports as a place branding
platform for emerging, transition, negatively
viewed, and newly industrialised countries.

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In doing so, the importance of investing in

sports as a component of a place branding plan
is discussed. Furthermore, for some countries
sports can serve as a central platform rather
than as a supplement to a branding initiative.
As the sports industry continues to grow and
globalise, place brand managers and marketers
must adjust to and capitalise on what has
become an ever-expanding paradigm the
sports economy.
This proposal may at first seem unrealistic to
some places given the resources required to
invest in sports and the many other challenges
such as education, transportation, and healthcare
facing them. In addition, emphasising sports in
any branding plan may appear to be a losing
game when considering that many of the
strongest sports programmes are those of firstworld countries who have the financial ability
and historical capital to invest heavily.
Despite these reservations, sports can provide
places with both tangible and intangible
benefits. Sports receive widespread free media
coverage, which generates valuable visibility that
can attract tourists, residents, and investors at a
low cost. Sports also stimulate an emotional
heat between the participants and the audiences
that can symbolise the energy, vigour, and
strength of an emerging nation in ways that
eco-branding, museums, and other cultural
attractions cannot. Another benefit is that sports
provide the local residents and companies and
institutions considering relocation with an
environment of variety and competition that
promises an engaging place to live. Moreover,
sports competition fosters common bonding,
which includes places for residents to share
their experiences and the accompanying healthy
tensions and uncertain outcomes that encourage
identity building.
Sports have often been an integral part of a
nations identity. The Olympics are one of the
defining attributes of Ancient Greece and the
Coliseum in Rome still stands as a symbol of
the sports and entertainment culture of the
Roman civilisation. It is, however, only been in
the last several decades that places have begun
to use sports strategically to promote their

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Place branding sports

brands. For example, Schimmel (2001)

examined how Indianapolis transformed from
an industrial city into a tourist and business
attraction by building sports facilities and
hosting sporting events, and Kerr and Johnson
(2005) demonstrated how the town of Bargo
decided to become Australias cycling town in
an attempt to reverse its historically negative
image. Smith (2005) has studied the cases of
Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield and
how sports initiatives have impacted these three
cities, and Brown et al. (2002) have discussed
the Sydney Olympics and its implications for
the Australian brand. The general focus of these
studies and others in the field is to explore the
effects of sports on the development and
distribution of a place brand, and all of them
have made important contributions to the
understanding of place branding.
Despite the growing academic interest in this
subject, there is still a need for work on the
strategic use of sports as a branding tool for
countries other than the industrialised and
established ones. Therefore, this paper will focus
on the rationale, strategies, and implementation
of branding these nations with sports. First, a
perspective on the evolution of sports and place
branding will be discussed. Next, three place
brand platforms will be examined for their fit
to a places brand. Finally, the paper will offer a
framework for how to approach and implement
a sports place brand initiative. In the end,
having a championship rugby team or goldmedal marathon runner is not enough.
Successful sports place branding on a global
stage requires follow-through and a coordinated
and coherent brand plan.

THE EVOLUTION OF SPORTS

AND PLACE BRANDING
The history of branding countries through
sports is marked by spectacular results,
promising fits and starts, and self-serving
manipulation. There is arguably no better
example of the potential power of the
relationship between sports and place than
New Zealand. In the early 20th century, New
Zealand branded the All Blacks, its national

rugby team. The team travelled frequently to

take on and beat the best of the British Isles.
In wearing their ominous black uniforms and
silver fern logo and conducting their fearsome
Haka opening game ritual based on the Maori
culture, they began to invent a brand for this
faraway English colony. The All Blacks put a
face on its country and still remain an integral
part of its identity (Jackson and Hokowhitu,
2002; Hope, 2002). The team was not only a
winner but symbolised the independent,
adventuresome, and rugged persona of the
country. Sports have the ability to transmit
emotional energy and qualities of competition
and dedication that no other endeavour can
emulate, and the All Blacks became a symbol
of New Zealands emergence as a brand with
assets and a people to match.
Similar efforts have been attempted over the
decades, with some countries experiencing
sustained success and others only temporary
recognition. For example, the Scandinavian
countries have branded skiing, the Dutch speed
skating, and the Japanese sumo wrestling. In
the case of India and Pakistan, cricket has
become not only the dominant sport but has
overshadowed the home country of England in
importance and crowd appeal. Kenya became
known as a running empire as early as the
1960s, and its great runners dominated the long
distance races at the Olympics and other world
events. All of these countries are associated with
their sporting achievements and in one way or
another have benefited. While the Kenyans have
benefited from their stars returning to the
homeland and investing in the country, they
are inconsistent in the development of their
running programme and have not fully
capitalised on the power of the branding appeal
of their international runners (Macharia, 2005).
In contrast, Norway has integrated their winter
sports expertise into producing not only sports
stars but also clothing lines and tourist
attractions.
Sometimes sports have been used as an
instrument to reshape perception, and not
always in the most ethical manner. In a
backhanded compliment to the power of sports

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branding, Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the

Soviet Union during the Cold War sought to
impress the world with their sports dominance.
The 1936 Berlin Olympics, captured by Leni
Riefenstahl (1938) in her documentary Olympia,
was an attempt by the Nazis to imprint
German athletic superiority on the globe. The
Soviet Union bloc saw themselves in a dual of
nations with the United States and extended
their battle to sports, competing successfully
over several decades, despite widespread
criticism of drug use. These two examples are
reminders that sports can be an instrument of
political oppression and used unfairly and
unwisely by governments. These dangers are
always present in any combination of sport and
state and should be heeded as demonstrated by
the recent soccer match-fixing allegations in
Germany (Kammerer, 2006) and Italy (David,
2006).2 Despite these admonitions, sports are
now part of a larger global economy and are
ignored only at the peril of a place seeking
development.
What has happened in sports is that
technology and globalisation have given places
access that they have never had before. The
configuration of the worldwide television
networks, internet, and wireless networks has
exploded, and in the process, sports have been
one of the greatest benefactors. Day or night,
fans can see or hear their favourite team no
matter where they are in the world. Further,
many sports have established universal appeal
as they move from their traditional home
countries to places all over the world. The
United States-based NBA is making major
inroads in Europe, China, and most of the
globe. Originally European- and South
American-based, FIFA has not only invaded the
United States but has made a major
commitment to the Asian sector to build up its
global empire. Cricket, once considered only an
upper class colony sport, is televised globally
and as a consequence has compressed its game
to appeal to markets that were unlikely to
watch the traditional five-day match marathon.
What was once a tightly configured sports
universe now amounts to hundreds of billions

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of dollars in value with an emerging country

like China alone predicted to have a sports
market of $10bn by 2008 (Agence France
Presse, 2005). Whether it is Formula-1 cars
zooming around an exotic track in Malaysia or
a Bulgarian table tennis star emerging on the
international scene, sports are everywhere and
consumed by an ever-growing and freespending public.

ARGUMENT FOR SPORTS

INVESTMENT
Despite the expansion of the sports industry,
investing in sports facilities and teams has been
an unresolved issue for places around the globe.
At this point, the investment question has been
relatively understudied, and the research that
does exist often offers inconsistent conclusions.
For example, in the United Kingdom, there is
a growing body of evidence suggesting that
hosting sporting events contributes positive
economic values to place branding initiatives.
For example, a report by the Sport Industry
Research Centre (UK Sport, 2004 cited in
Gratton et al., 2005) entitled Measuring Success
2: The Economic Impact of Major Sport Events
synthesised the data from 16 studies on the
economic impact of sporting events in the
United Kingdom. The consensus finding was
that cities received a substantial increase in
economic activity as a result of hosting their
events.
In contrast to the United Kingdoms
research, almost every economic study
examining the financial implications of public
funding for facilities of professional sports
teams in the United States (eg Quirk and Fort,
1992; Noll and Zimbalist, 1997; Rosentraub,
1997) has concluded that cities and their
taxpayers do not consistently receive the
benefits that owners and politicians promise.
While job creation, improved housing,
downtown re-gentrification, and an overall
positive impact on the local economy have
been popular appeals to the public for funding,
the evidence suggests that the returns on
taxpayer investments do not always justify the
significant expenditures.

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Yet places in the United States continue to

take the financial risks to build massive stadiums
with public money. In Minneapolis, Minnesota
alone, a city in a state of only 5 million people,
two new stadiums are being built with a
combined cost of more than $750m, which
taxpayers are responsible for varying
contributions depending on their jurisdiction
(Kaszuba, 2006a, b),3 and there are negotiations
for a third with a likely price tag of at least a
half billion dollars (Pabst, 2006).4 Resolutions
for the two stadiums passed despite a raging
battle for years as opponents threw up
numerous roadblocks citing the draining of
financial resources from education, health, and
other infrastructure needs. This scenario was
repeated time and time again in cities all over
the United States, but still resulted in a sports
facility construction boom across the nation.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, at least 25 of
the National Football Leagues 32 teams have
either remodelled their stadiums or built brand
new ones (Frangos, 2004), 20 new Major
League Baseball Stadiums have been constructed
(Ballparks of Baseball, 2006), and 24 National
Basketball Association teams have moved into
new arenas (Hoops Corner, 2006). In the same
time period, at least 50 per cent of Division IA university and college football programmes
have built a new stadium or made significant
renovations to their existing one (Litan et al.,
2003), and this trend has even reached
American high schools, with an estimated
$440m worth of new facilities built in 2004
alone (Menez, 2005).
These are huge investments in sports, and
given the results of many economic studies,
why are places still willing to risk hundreds of
millions of dollars on sports when they are
choosing among many other pressing needs? An
answer is that the communication and
marketing benefits that a place derives from
having sports facilities and teams make the
investment worth it. If Minneapolis did not
have its major sports teams and a Division-I
university programme, it is safe to say that its
visibility as a city would be reduced
significantly. What price can be placed on a

favourable image that has global implications?

What are the sports teams worth to a company
considering moving to Minneapolis? What
dollar value can be placed on the residents
pride and civic engagement with sports teams?
What is the worth of a box score for a baseball
team that appears in every media outlet daily?
These are the important, but often intangible
benefits that accrue to a sports branding
programme that cannot always be quantified.
Sports branding at its base is about people and
their relationship to their place, and there is
virtually no substitute for this connection.
Whether it is Minneapolis, a first-world city
struggling with prioritising its place branding
initiatives, or Senegal, a third-world country
trying to not only stabilise its political and
economic situation but also reverse long-held
perceptions about its nation, all places face the
same problems of deciding how and where to
spend their resources. If a place decides to
invest in sports, it needs to understand the
branding possibilities.

SPORTS AS A PLACE BRANDING

PLATFORM
An effective place branding strategy requires a
platform that can communicate its identity and
assets to its target markets. If a place chooses a
sports initiative to brand itself, the possibilities
include the event, team, and place platform. While
the resources required to implement each vary,
they are intended to offer the range of possibilities
for emerging, transition, negatively viewed, or
newly industrialised nations to consider in their
efforts to break out in the marketplace.

Event platform
Hosting a sporting event is the current state
best practice of sports place branding. Places
have historically seen these opportunities as
windows into their economy, culture, and health
and a chance to reposition the brand. Events
can be one-time occurrences such as the
Olympics or the FIFA World Cup or annual
occurrences such as a professional golf
tournament or a road race. In the best cases,
such as Sydney, Australia hosting the 2000

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Olympics, it can be an unqualified triumph

delivering tourist dollars, investment, and a
tremendous lift in self-esteem to this relatively
isolated continent (Brown et al., 2002). The
event, however, does not have to be of such a
magnitude for a place to benefit from sports.
It can be staging the junior championships in
track and field like the sports branded city of
Indianapolis, Indiana has done or the hosting
of a regional professional golf tournament in
Thailand.
A compelling example of rolling the dice
on an event platform was the decision of the
Chinese government to pursue and ultimately
land the 2008 Olympics. The Chinese are
determined to use the Olympics as a window
into their progress from a third-world country
to a powerful free market economy. In doing
so, they are constructing new sports facilities,
public transportation infrastructure and a
terminal at the airport that will cost $40bn, a
number that far exceeds the $12bn the Greeks
spent for the 2004 Olympics (Kranhold and
Fong, 2006). At the same time, they are
wrestling with a massive pollution problem,
potential transportation nightmares, civic and
civil issues of behaviour, and a reputation as an
authoritarian government with little tolerance
for free speech (Xiangwei, 2006; Dickie, 2006;
Batson, 2005). While it may be optimistic to
think that a successful Olympic staging will
resolve all of these issues, significant progress in
a global showcase can jumpstart a reinvention.
There is more to the Chinese attempts to
brand sports than the Olympics itself. All over
the country, there are sports teams and junior
programmes intended to create Chinese
excellence in a wide range of sports. The tennis
world was startled when Li Na, a product of
Chinas drive to establish a sports identity,
emerged at Wimbledon with little fanfare and a
powerful ground game (Roberts, 2006). The
shoe company Li Ning, a heretofore weak
competitor to Nike and Adidas in the basketball
shoe market, has ramped up an extensive star
campaign for a relatively obscure US basketball
player (Kang and Fowler, 2006). This campaign
is of importance as it throws down the gauntlet

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to countries such as the United States and

Germany that not only is China going to
launch events but it will also build stadiums,
develop world class athletes and outfit them
with their own branded sports gear. All this
more deeply roots the Chinese sports event
strategy and all the necessary ingredients to
support such an elaborate branding effort.
While there is often more risk with the
event platform, its rewards can be greater. The
amount of free media coverage in a relatively
short and focused period of time is an
opportunity for the country to promote itself
and its assets to potential buyers. An additional
advantage of the event platform is that it is an
opportunity for places to invest in infrastructure
improvements that are designed to benefit the
country after the event. On the critical issue
of social impact, events can also serve to bond
the residents of the place through pride and
investment of time and real and emotional
energy.
Of course, the downside to any event
platform is that places can be unprepared for
the attention and rather than serving as a
coming out party, it becomes an indictment of
the places problems. Moreover, some places,
such as Greece (Miller, 2005), find themselves
with investments in facilities that are not
financially stable or usable in the future. As a
result, this requires careful consideration of any
opportunity and that the audit and analysis of
strengths and weaknesses are done with realistic
expectations.

Team platform
There are two different types of team platforms:
the privately owned teams that are named
after a place and the national teams that are
controlled by the place itself. In either case, it
is often the task of the place to cooperate in
helping build facilities, participating in joint
marketing campaigns, and facilitating the
relationship so that the teams have friendly
environments. In many cases, teams transcend
private ownership and become magnets for
tourism, business attraction, and resident
retention. Stellar examples of that model are

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the New York Yankees in the United States and

Manchester United in England, which have
helped build the brands of their places through
their global reach. Manchester United has
become a global brand with approximately
75 million fans worldwide (Scott, 2006), and in
doing so, it is bringing visibility, income, and
star power back to the home city. Other soccer
teams such as Chelsea and Real Madrid are
following a similar strategy and creating global
appeal through star power and new technology.
In cities like Toronto and Montreal in Canada,
the professional hockey clubs the Maple
Leafs and Canadians are the most sought
after tickets in the cities and serve not only
as a magnet for the winter season but as the
critical identity for the country itself.
The private team platform has set off major
attraction wars in some cities. While in the
earlier part of the 20th century it was
considered an asset to have a well-known sports
team, it was not until the rise of television and
the increasing emphasis on place attraction and
tourism that the addition of a sports team was a
central element of a place brand. In the United
States, for example, Milwaukee, Wisconsin has
lured a professional baseball team from Boston,
lost it to Atlanta, and then managed to convince
Major League Baseball to grant them the
Seattle franchise that was originally lured from
Washington DC. All of these relocations were
driven by the host cities belief that both their
place identity and revenue possibilities would
increase with a Major League Baseball team.
The obligation of building stadiums and roads
and adding other inducements are generally
seen as part of the overall places branding
effort.
While place brand managers have little
control over the management of a private team,
an emerging strategy is for places to brand the
publicly operated national teams as if they were
private enterprises. For example, the Brazilian
national soccer team has become a major
platform for the country to export its culture
to potential tourists, residents, and investors.
During the 2006 World Cup, the Brazilian
soccer federation launched what was termed the

Culture Cup (Copa da Cultura), using the team

as the springboard to showcase Brazilian art,
film, and other parts of its culture. The Culture
Cup also borrowed the star power from former
national team player, Pele, who was symbolic of
the Brazilian athleticism, grace, and samba beat
(Xinhua General News Service, 2006). In this
example, the Brazilians are capitalising on the
visibility and reach of their national soccer team
to inform potential markets about its country
and culture.
The Ghana national soccer team, the Black
Stars, which were noted for their style and
playing ability in the 2006 World Cup, is
another case of a team platform. Ghanaians
were glued to their television sets as the entire
country stopped to watch the team play against
the worlds powerhouses such as Brazil, the
Czech Republic, Italy, and the United States.
The country was on every media channel in
the globe with millions of people asking
questions about it.
Ghana, with a population of 22 million, of
which more than one-third cannot afford to
spend $1 per day to live (The Economist,
2006), was suddenly in the international
spotlight. Significantly, a country with a
dominating junior international programme
was finally stepping up at the senior level for
the first time, and as a result of their World
Cup success, they experienced a visibility
bounce. For example, Graphic Sports, the twice
a week publication of the Ghanaian Graphic
Communication Group, doubled from 12 to
24 pages and circulation increased by two
times, and the companys main newspaper,
the Daily Graphic, experienced a 40 per cent
increase in advertising, all because of the
Black Starss performance. Company
spokesperson Albert Sam said of the Black
Starss impact, I think we will definitely meet
our targets, and it will mean more revenue
for the company, more expansion and then
it will also mean that service will improve,
conditions of service for employees will also
be better (Dovi, 2006). This example of the
Graphic Communication Group is a snapshot
of the potential of what a sports branding

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position can bring to even an impoverished

country.
Examples such as Brazils Culture Cup and
Ghanas soccer team are at the extreme ends
of the place branding spectrum. Brazil has a
sophisticated and mature sports strategy with
many parts, heroes, and connections to a
number of its cultural symbols. While Brazil
is a world-class economic force, it still has
significant poverty and is continuing to use
sports as a branding tool to help re-image itself.
Ghana, on the other hand, is one of the poorest
nations in the world with far fewer resources
than Brazil, and is faced with even more dire
circumstances than other emerging countries.
During the 2006 soccer World Cup, however,
it tasted the economic power of sports and
now needs to find a systematic mechanism to
capitalise on it.

Place platform
The place platform is the newest strategy of
the three and involves wholly integrating sports
into the design of the place brand. While
this platform is only in its earliest stages of
development, place brand managers might take
a cue from a first-mover in this category, the
newly industrialised emirate of Dubai.
Dubais transition from an oil-reliant trade
economy in the middle of the desert to a world
class tourist destination has been one of the
most impressive in recent place branding history.
With a population of only 1.4 million and in a
country roughly the size of the state of Maine,
Dubai has undergone a transformation with a
heavy emphasis on tourism in order to protect
itself against the inevitable depletion of its oil
reserves. Combining its aggressive real estate
developments and state-of-the-art entertainment
and leisure activities, Dubai has seen its
numbers of visitors explode from 500,000
in 1995 to 6.7 million only a decade later
(Khalaf and Wallis, 2006).
The emirates early success in the tourism
industry has stimulated its most ambitious
project yet a $5.7bn development called
Dubailand, which includes the Dubai Sports
City (International Reports, 2005), that is

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designed to help increase the number of annual

visitors to 15 million by 2010 (Khalaf and
Wallis, 2006). The plans strategy appears to
benchmark the worlds best shopping malls,
theme parks, zoos, and sports facilities and to
exceed them in both style and substance.
Among the many attractions planned is the
Falcon City of Wonders, comprised of replicas
of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the
Snowdome, an enclosed ski mountain for
tourists wanting some time on the slopes while
in the desert. With something for seemingly
every traveller at anytime of the year, Dubai is
becoming tourisms version of one-stop
shopping where all the major travel and leisure
attractions are being imported, consolidated, and
distilled into one place.
Perhaps the most innovative component of
Dubailand is the Dubai Sports City. Designed
on more than 50 million square feet, this
$2.5bn project represents an unprecedented
marriage between sports and place (Manly,
2006). While sports have always been a central
connector in communities, never before have
they been institutionalised as a primary place
builder. Like a town where an automobile
manufacturing plant defines its identity, the
Dubai Sports City is defined by sports and
plans to use the events and their athletes to
connect the residents, tourists, and investors. In
addition to the four sports stadiums, there will
be shopping malls, condominiums, hotels,
training academies, a sports medicine facility,
and other sports-themed attractions. In
summing up the project, Dubai Sports City
chief executive U. Balasubramaniam
pronounced, Finally, a city within a city,
powered by sports (Manly, 2006).
Dubai Sports City is not the emirates first
venture into sports. Over the last decade, Dubai
became a premiere host of events such as the
Dubai Desert Classic, the Dubai Tennis
Championships, Dubai Rugby Sevens, and many
international auto races and horse races.
Managing these events was valuable data for
testing the brand concept of the Dubai Sports
City and provided the evidence to potential
residents, tourists, and investors that Dubai was

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Place branding sports

capable of serving the sports community. As

a result, Dubai has been able to justify raising
the stakes in the competitive place wars to not
only fulfill its vision of becoming the Sports
Capital of the Middle East (International
Reports, 2005), but also perhaps the worlds
centre for sports.
Star power is the principal driver of the
Dubai Sports City concept, as global athletes,
teams, and federations serve as the headliners
for the citys facilities. Manchester United, golf
coach Butch Harmon, and tennis guru David
Lloyd have invested in training academies in
Dubai. In addition, Ernie Els, the popular mens
golfer from South Africa, is the designer of The
Dunes golf course, which is also the centrepiece
of one of the luxurious housing developments
that the city has planned. A final star power
draw is the International Cricket Council, the
governing body of cricket, which moved its
headquarters from London to Dubai in order
to be more centrally located among its member
countries and to capitalise on the new facilities,
long-term commitment, and financial support
the new city is offering (McSheehy, 2005).
Designed to capitalise on the branding power
of sports and attract a segmented group of
sports fans and participants, Dubai Sports City
is the avatar in redefining the relationship
between sports and place and how the two are
industrialised. Dubais place brand-building
formula of constructing the sports facilities,
adding the housing and amenities of a modern
city, and using sports star power to connect all
of the elements could signal new developments
and innovations in place branding, with sports
serving as the anchor. While Dubai has the
resources to fund such an elaborate sports city,
it still can serve for lesser endowed countries as
a lesson plan to brand sports. Many countries
have a strong sports history with advantages in
facilities and skill development that can be
branded as a sports place centre.
The three strategies presented here are
intended to provide nations the possibilities
for sports place branding. While each nation
has different resources and needs, the three
platforms and their combinations can offer a

blueprint for how to proceed in developing the

sports place initiative. The foundations for this
development process are discussed in the next
section.

SPORTS BRAND POSITIONING

For those nations that are candidates for a
sports branding transformation, there are
three issues that they must address: the brand
concept, infrastructure, and distribution.
Whether it is the event, team, or place platform,
the importance of these issues is similar for any
nation considering place branding through
sports.
Every place must think of its sports brand as
a concept, making sure that it is attractive to
them over the long term and has a potential
market. The concept must reflect the places
goals and what it can reasonably deliver. It is
more likely that Thailand would select a
concept built around golf or boxing instead of
ice hockey, which has no historical association.
Likewise, Finland deciding on an elaborate
branding plan to become a major player in the
surfing world would not only require too many
resources but a major restructuring of its
heritage. In addition, if a country has a small
population, it would be unrealistic for it to try
to compete in a wide range of sports with
larger countries such as the United States and
Russia. It would be more effective and efficient
to selectively choose and develop a niche in
those areas.
A good example of a country that has
developed and sustained a strong brand is
Australia, a country with a 12-month outdoors
culture and a history of adventure and vigorous
sports activities. In this warm weather country
with most of the population on the ocean, the
Australians have centred their brand plan on
becoming world class swimmers, divers, water
polo players, and surfers. Their location assets
have made Australia not only a force in water
sports on the global stage but also a premiere
tourist destination for people looking to engage
in these sports. As the Australian case illustrates,
a good concept takes into consideration the
population, the climate, the potential for

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differentiation, and the importance of the

sports fit with the identity of the place.
A second element of a good sports brand
positioning is an understanding and willingness
to facilitate its infrastructure. In this context,
infrastructure is not only the facilities and
transportation, but the ability to provide the
structure and organisation to produce talent for
the sports brand at all levels. Historically, the
most successful countries have very strong
youth programmes.5 Many of them begin at the
grade school level with systematic coaching,
strong parental and community involvement,
and facilities that are age-based and consistent
with building a strong sports brand. Countries
such as Canada and Japan have built extensive
infrastructures for their branded sports. In other
cases, despite a lack of ideal facilities and
equipment, the drive so permeates the culture
that, for example, Ghanaian kids will play soccer
in spaces that barely resemble soccer fields and
with balls that are often made of gum tree juice
(Duodu, 2005). Whether they are institutionally
or culturally driven, places must ensure that
they have an understanding of the youth
development process and sustain the
cooperation of the government, schools, parents,
and young people.
A nation that could benefit from developing
infrastructure to support its brand is South
Korea, which has recently become a dominant
country in womens professional golf. The
combination of a culture that promotes hard
work and focused career development and the
surprising victories by Se Ri Pak in the 1998
Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA)
Championship and US Womens Open has
helped stimulate South Korean womens interest
in the sport and develop a global identity for
this emerging nation (Associated Press
Worldstream, 2006; Guregian, 2006). The results
have been impressive: At one point during the
2006 LPGA season, four of the top ten money
winners on the LPGA Tour were South
Koreans and 11 were among the 30 highest
ranking golfers in the world (Branch, 2006).
The problem is that the country is not
capitalising on its successful golfers by building

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and supporting a golf infrastructure. Playing

golf in South Korea is expensive and is an
activity in which only the upper classes
participate. Most young, talented South Korean
golfers are forced to learn the game on the
driving range and move to another country
if they want to practice their skills on a real
course (Yoon, 2006). As a result, South Korea
is not maximising the advantages of its valuable
branding assets. It would be more effective for
the country to consider developing its own
golfers by either subsidising the costs of play or
building state-owned courses and facilities that
could help retain and develop South Korean
golfers as they prepare for international
competition. South Korea has some of the most
talented golfers in the world, but it is wasting
an opportunity to not only generate visibility
for the country but also attract tourists,
investors, and residents to what could be known
as an international centre for golfing excellence.
The final element is distribution. After
developing the concept and establishing the
infrastructure internally, sports place brands
must be launched into the marketplace. In
the past, the traditional pipelines of big media,
advertising, and public relations were often
too costly for emerging places. Today, there
are less expensive and innovative ways to reach
marketplaces. For example, places can capitalise
on the benefits and value of new media and
integrate it into their branding plan. Websites,
podcasts, and blogs give places a low cost
option for reaching targeted audiences and
for the first time can communicate an emerging
places vision, goals, and relevance to a global
market. Another possibility is that places
can focus on attracting foreign investment
from global sports leagues and federations with
their sports brand concept. All the major
sports brands are now sending out emissaries
to spread their sport. The National Basketball
Association (NBA), for example, with their
Basketball without Borders programme, has
travelled to foreign nations on community
service missions, which simultaneously builds
the visibility of the NBA and the countries
they visit.6

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An example of an emerging country sports

brand that has capitalised on distribution is
Jamaica and its fish out of water bobsled team.
Immortalised in the movie Cool Runnings (Walt
Disney Video, 1993), the country turned an
improbable appearance at the 1988 Calgary
Winter Olympics into a valuable place branding
asset. The brand concept was driven by
perspective by incongruity a bobsled team
from a tropical climate and was an example
of the innovation that a country needs to stand
out. The Jamaicans finished in last place in that
Olympic event, but because of the incongruity
of the choice and the underdog storyline that
accompanied the team, Disney decided to
produce the movie, and as result, Jamaica still
benefits from the visibility.7
The ability to develop and implement a
place brand that is driven by sports requires
careful planning and strategic implementation.
There are always cases in the sports world
where an unlikely athlete or team from a
relatively obscure country emerges to win an
Olympic gold medal in wrestling or the Rugby
World Cup. These could be described as
brand-forming moments, which have
historically been invaluable in launching a
potential sports brand (Rein et al., 2006). For
that brand-forming moment, the athlete or
team propels the countrys name into
worldwide media attention, generating global
visibility that most other tourist or business
attractions cannot provide. The challenge for
place brand managers is to capitalise on these
brand-forming moments when they occur.
More importantly, however, they must prepare a
long-term sports strategy with the moment as a
foundation that emphasises the brand concept,
infrastructure development, and distribution.

CONCLUSION
In the future, successful place brands will
need to integrate the proven strategies of the
past with innovations in place communication
and marketing. The position of this paper is
that an important area for innovation is sports
because of their visibility benefits, the emotional
heat they establish between places and their

markets, and their ability to attract tourists,

investors, and residents. The trend of sportsplace development is underway as countries
are already capitalising on the appeal of sports
teams, events, and the stars that comprise
them to their brand. In most cases, however,
places are just beginning to develop the
infrastructure to support sports-based branding
and are searching for the right combination
of strategies to make a sports initiative
effective.
This paper has suggested three sports
branding platform possibilities: the event, team,
and place. A place can adopt all three platforms
simultaneously, but for places with limited
resources, it is more realistic to commit to one
or another. This is especially critical since in this
increasingly competitive global marketplace,
segmentation is vital to the success of sports
ventures. Emerging, transition, negatively
viewed, and newly industrialised nations that
develop a specialised sports platform are more
likely to receive a greater payoff than places that
choose to spread themselves across too many
markets.
The brand choices for a place in this
competitive marketplace are rarely easy ones.
Even among the traditional brand decision
points, tourism, business attraction, resident
retention, and product export, there is
competition for money and prominence. In
addition, there are competing needs for
infrastructure, education, health care,
environmental concerns and other issues that
are considered important to a places welfare.
The advancement of a sports branding culture
is inevitably going to vie with legitimate
competing concerns forcing all places to
sort out their priorities. It may well be that
branding strategies in the future are going
to be more short-lived and need constant
adjustment in a marketplace with such
sudden shifts of resources and technological
innovations. In this changing environment, the
sports branding proposition is another important
component to serve either as a centrepiece or
a valuable supplement to a places overall
branding position.

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Notes
1

6
7

The World Travel & Tourism Council predicts that travel

and tourism will generate $6,477.2bn in economic activity in 2006.
In Germany, there have been at least two recent cases of
match-fixing. Another match-fixing scandal erupted in
Italy in which the nations most storied team, Juventus,
and a number of Italian soccer officials including referees
were implicated.
The Minnesota legislature approved funding for a $522m
downtown Minneapolis stadium for the Major League
Baseball team Minnesota Twins. The state legislature also
signed off on a $248.7m stadium in Minneapolis for the
University of Minnesota Gophers football team.
The Minnesota Vikings have also been campaigning for
state funding for a new stadium, but the Minnesota legislature did not approve funding for a new stadium during
the 2006 Congressional sessions.
The United States, Germany, France, England, and Russia
have established extensive youth development programmes
that are either publicly financed or privately managed.
For more information on Basketball Without Borders, see
www.nba.com/bwb/bwob_index.html.
The 1988 Jamaican bobsled team still has an impact on
the country and the sport of bobsledding in general. The
team has a page on the Jamaican Web site, see www.
jamaicans.com/bobsled.

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